Taja Cheek was already recording an album about grief when her mother Lorraine died. “It’s almost like I caused her death in some way—the feeling is absurd, bigger than myself, a premonition,” she told Afropunk. In 2014, Cheek adopted L’Rain as a stage name and has just finally released her self-titled debut as a beautiful, untidy conduit for the absurd synchronicity of her grieving. The album isn’t so much about Lorraine the person as it is about the crater her death imprinted on Cheek.
A lifelong Brooklynite, Cheek is a DIY artist and noise musician who glides around several scenes. She has a background in classical cello and piano, and throughout L’Rain she’s playing keyboards, synthesizers, and guitar, as well as manning tape delay effects and samples. She’s not alone; together with a small cast of session instrumentalists, Cheek builds swelling mounds of vaguely spiritual free jazz and ambient sound. L’Rain is a perilously busy record that’s open but not begging to be parsed. Sometimes it feels too cerebrally insular, like a barely-curated diary with all the scribbles and rough drafts springing out from the margins.
Most of the album seems to hover in a haze levitated by the haunt of Cheek’s voice, whether it’s manipulated to sound removed and choral, or delayed and reversed as a noise element. Either way, the effects often render her lyrics murky and the entire album can slip by without a discernible phrase. “Heavy (But Not in Wait)” opens the record with a clean swell that grows into soulful folk once it’s crescendoed to final form. Here and throughout, L’Rain’s songs seem to softly wander and change shape. There isn’t a single track with a straightforward structure, so the nine songs on L’Rain meander to the point of feeling more like a dozen.
Cheek and company often seem possessed by repetitive guitar riffs and churn them into meditative motifs that lend the entire record a pastoral feel. “Stay, Go (Go, Stay)” has a twinkle at its heart, and while it sounds like L’Rain is singing about love, it’s obviously just slipped through her fingers. “Bat,” a yearningly nostalgic track about a bat trapped indoors, chugs along like a sleepy lullaby. “Benediction” is a chanting, ambient intermission that sounds like Cheek walking around in a heartbroken daze. Skittering saxophone darts across the tracklist to dizzying effect. “Which Fork/I’ll Be” is the most rambunctious track here, taking a gentle ode and giving it a softly pulsating disco vibe that almost seems goofy alongside the serenity of the rest of the album.
Several shorter tracks—conversational field recordings, a voicemail that’s borderline uncomfortable to listen to in its intimacy—break up larger ideas. It’s rarely a pained sadness that pierces through L’Rain, but rather a wistful fog hovering over every moment. The whole thing feels like bouncing around Cheek’s head. She hums, whispers, coos, and chants so hushedly that she renders many of these moments as scattered background noise. Certainly, these things mean something to her, but it can be difficult to find their meaning from the outside. It sounds like she’s recorded this album for herself as a personal offering for the world to try untangling. Of course, all art is meant for this type of prodding. But L’Rain sounds first and foremost like self-therapy, and even from the outside, it’s convincingly cathartic.
